A self-styled mystic who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Details
Gisella Cardia, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams and deceptions.
“As paradoxical as it may seem, she actually feels relief, believing this is an opportunity to reveal the truth of the events with transparency and to definitively put an end to all forms of speculation, misunderstanding and controversy,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
